More Violent Rhetoric on the Left Ignored

Perhaps the mainstream media was a bit too busy searching for violence within the Tea Party movement to notice that a Massachusetts Democrat said Tuesday it was time for the Wisconsin protesters to “get a little bloody.”

The Hill reports, “Representative Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) fired up a group of union members in Boston with a speech urging them to work down in the trenches to fend off limits to workers’ rights like those proposed in Wisconsin.”

In his address to Boston union members, Capuano remarked, “This is going to be a struggle at least for the next two years. Let’s be serious about this. They’re not going to back down and we’re not going to back down. This is a struggle for the hearts and minds of America.”

He added, “I’m proud to be here with people who understand that it’s more than just sending an email to get you going. Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary.”

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In a climate like that seen in Wisconsin, such rhetoric is particularly inflammatory, as anger has flared over proposed labor reforms introduced by Governor Scott Walker. The Wisconsin state legislature was naturally disconcerted by the statements made by Capuano.

“We take security seriously, whether its for me, the lieutenant governor and all 132 members of the state legislature

The very next day, Capuano issued a half-hearted apology: “I strongly believe in standing up for worker rights and my passion for preserving those rights may have gotten the best of me yesterday in an unscripted speech. I wish I had used different language to express my passion and I regret my choice of words.”

As a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus with clear ties to the Democratic Socialists of America — the same group that has adopted a number of violent, blood, revolutionary songs like The Fist and the Rose and John Lennon’s Imagine — Capuano’s passions and violent rhetoric appear to be directly in line with those with whom he surrounds himself.

After all, the Democratic Socialists of America have no qualms about admitting to their efforts to achieve socialism in the United States, or even Communism for that matter. In an introductory pamphlet to the Democratic Socialists of America, the group outlines its various beliefs, revealing a propensity for socialism and communism. For instance, the pamphlet indicates, “We believe that the workers and consumers who are affected by economic institutions should own and control them.” Likewise, “The fall of Communism should not blind us to injustices at home. We cannot allow all radicalism to be dismissed as ‘Communist.’”

Of course, the irony of Representative Capuano’s violent assertions is that it was the Democratic Party that proposed a ban on “threatening symbols or language” as an overreaction to the Tucson, Arizona, shooting. And yet here is a Democrat who not only made a violent innuendo, but whose statement was ignored by the hypersensitive media and Left.

Then again, this is not the first time that violence or violent rhetoric on the Left has been forgiven or overlooked.

For example, SEIU has adopted a violent new theme song for the Wisconsin protests. The lyrics of the theme song, performed by the rock band Dropkick Murphys, are as follows:

When the boss comes callin’ will you stand and fight? When the boss comes callin’ we must unite, when the boss comes callin’ we can’t let them win, when the boss comes callin’ don’t believe their lies when the boss comes callin’ he’ll take his toll, when the boss comes callin’ don’t you sell your soul, when the boss comes callin’ we gotta organize, let ‘em know, we gotta take the bastards down, let them know we gotta smash them to the ground, let ‘em know we gotta take the bastards down.

Imagine the public outcry if the Tea Party movement adopted such a song for its theme.

Likewise, when SEIU thugs mercilessly beat black conservative Tea Partier Kenneth Gladney and called him the "n-word,” groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) forgave the violence.

Furthermore, when Fox News conservative pundit Glenn Beck called out Frances Fox Piven for attempting to incite violence by calling on middle-class Americans to make their way to the streets in the same vein as the people of Greece, he was touted yet again as a conspiracy theorist and a fearmonger. But in what other context can one take the following statements made by Piven?

In December, Piven wrote a piece for The Nation wherein she encourages the unemployed to embrace their anger:

So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs? After all, the injustice is apparent. Working people are losing their homes and their pensions while robber-baron CEOs report renewed profits and windfall bonuses. Shouldn’t the unemployed be on the march? Why aren’t they demanding enhanced safety net protections and big initiatives to generate jobs?

An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees.

Regardless of the numerous examples of violence on the Left, most of the mainstream media and the Left continue to embrace a “move along, nothing to see here” attitude towards it and instead launch websites like TeaPartyTracker.org to scrutinize alleged racism and violence in the Tea Party movement.

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